Would be adulterers sign up to website

More than 200 would-be adulterers in Lurgan signed up to use a website that aims to facilitate extra-marital affairs.

Figures published by The Times in London shows that Lurgan had 208 registered users on the Ashley Madison ‘infidelity’ website.

And the number of registered users in Portadownn was slightly lower on 205.

In total, Craigavon as a whole had 999 people registered with the website, whose database of users was leaked across the globe last month.

The figure for Armagh and the surrounding district was 552 while there were 306 people registered in Banbridge.

Not surprisingly, Belfast had the biggest number of registered users in Northern Ireland with 8,520. In Lisburn the figure was 976 registered users.

Launched in 2001, Ashley Madison claims to have over 40 million anonymous members worldwide and has the slogan, “Life is short. Have an affair”. Its website has a section dedicated to ‘Infidelity News’.

An online dating service based in Canada that is marketed to people who are married or in a committed relationship, it hit the headlines around the world earlier this summer when it emerged that details of more than 33 million accounts had been stolen from the website.

As well as dealing with the data theft, the company that owns the website has also furiously denied recent claims that the vast majority of its female profiles are fake.

The Times revealed that there are over 1.3 million British profiles contained on the leaked database. It published details of the towns and cities from across the UK with over 100 registered users.

Billing itself as the world’s leading married dating service for ‘discreet’ encounters, Ashley Madison has stated that it is “actively adjusting to the attack on our business and members’ privacy by criminals”.

A group of hackers calling themselves ‘The Impact Team’ has claimed responsibility for the theft of Ashley Madison’s customer data, which was originally reported by a variety of media outlets in July.

They also threatened to reveal the data unless the Ashley Madison website was taken down.

The BBC reported that this stolen customer data had been leaked on the so-called ‘dark web’, meaning it is accessible only via encrypted browsers. The material allegedly posted included members accounts and credit card details.